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Why is Smoking Dangerous to Your Health?

We have all heard it a million times – smoking is bad for you. And we all accept this as truth because we know someone who has adverse health effects from smoking cigarettes. However, do you really know why smoking is so bad for you? If you are a smoker or know someone who is a smoker, then you should read this article carefully. There are lots of unpleasant things here, but they are true.

The dangers to your health from smoking are not something that has been made up or exaggerated to market against cigarette companies. Cigarette smoking will cause health problems for you if you do it long enough. And it could even kill you. Here is why:

Cigarettes are made of tobacco, which as a product that is comes directly out of the ground in an organic form, seems like it wouldn’t be too bad for you. It, however, has innumerable health effects when smoked. Cigarette smoke is made up of many, many chemicals that are individually and collectively dangerous to you. When you light a cigarette, smoke is produced by the burning of the tobacco and additives contained in the cigarette. This burning releases more than 4,000 chemicals in the cigarette smoke. At least 60 of these chemicals are known, proven cancer-causing chemicals.

So, every time you light a cigarette, you are ingesting thousands of chemicals, dozens of which are proven to cause one of the most deadly diseases the world has ever known. Even if none of the chemicals in cigarette smoke caused cancer, it would still be hazardous to your health. Ingesting so many different kinds of chemicals is horrible for your health, especially when you consider that smokers do this multiple times a day.

I know that you are probably thinking that even though chemicals aren’t good for you, they are in just about everything these days. You can hardly buy a box of crackers without being exposed to some kind of known carcinogen. So, why is smoking so much worse than all the other ways that chemicals enter our bodies?

One reason that smoking these chemicals is so harmful is that in the form of smoke inhaled directly into the lungs, these chemicals are readily and easily absorbed by the body. There is no other ingredients to buffer the chemicals, no stomach acid to break some of them down. With cigarette smoke, inhaling these chemicals sends them straight into your body to start wreaking havoc.

If you still don’t believe that the chemicals in cigarette smoking are any more harmful than other chemicals that you are exposed to every day, consider some of the chemicals contained in cigarette smoke. These include cyanide, benzene, formaldehyde, wood alcohol, acetylene and ammonia. That’s quite a list, and it only has six of the thousands of chemicals contained in cigarette smoke on it.

Aside from harmful chemicals, the smoke produced by cigarettes also has tar, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide in it. The poisonous contents of cigarette smoke add up quickly when you start listing them. Cap all of that off with the addictive ingredient, nicotine, and you have quite a powerful cocktail on your hands.

And if all of that weren’t enough, tobacco leaves can also contain levels of radioactive materials. When someone smokes cigarettes regularly, the radioactive materials can build up and cause extreme harmful effects much like those of receiving a large dose of radioactive material.

It has long been debated whether or not smoking cigarettes causes cancer. Cigarette companies have fought for years trying to prove that their products don’t cause cancer, while advocates against smoking for fought vigilantly to prove that they do. Unfortunately for the cigarette companies, their products do cause cancer. Cigarette smoking accounts for about 30% of all diagnosed cancers and 80% of lung cancer cases.

Whether you smoke cigarettes or use tobacco in another form, there is no safe way to ingest tobacco. Using it can cause cancer to any part of your body that the tobacco, its smoke or additives come in contact with including the nasal cavity, sinuses, lip, voice box, mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, pancreas, cervix, ovary, kidney, stomach and even can cause leukemia.

Beyond being offensive and possibly rude to those around you who like to breath fresh air, smoking can cause all kinds of horrible health problems and should be avoided. If, however, you have been smoking for many years, you may feel that it is impossible to quit now. It is never impossible to quit smoking. You just have to make the decision that you want to stop this horrible habit.

There are many methods for trying to quit smoking out there, and finding the one that works for you is worth the trouble. You and your family and friends will all be happy that you made the decision to take care of yourself and stop smoking.